Desire in His Blood

He was silent.

For a long time, he didn’t say anything at all. Just regarded me with those molten eyes.

But when he spoke next, his tone didn’t hold the same cutting edge. “Tell me how the debts came to be.”

That…that wasn’t what I’d been expecting him to say.

His voice was still gruff. It felt like I was tearing the words straight from his throat. He didn’t want to ask…and yet, I felt like he was trying to understand.

Maybe—just maybe—my words had some effect on him.

My feet tingled when I shifted on my knees. There was still a hardened lump in my throat, but I tucked a stray hair behind my ear that had escaped from my bun throughout the long day.

There has to be some give between us, I realized. Unless we want to live in a miserable existence, we need to try to understand one another.

The only thing I could do was try.

“I suspect that my father has had a long history with collectors,” I began slowly, hesitant. Tentative. “My mother would have known, I suppose, but if she did, she hid it well. The signs were there though, even when I’d been young. Too young to even understand.”

“What signs?” Azur asked. There was a part of me that felt like he had a right to know these things. He’d paid off the collectors on behalf of my family, after all.

“Even before the war,” I said, casting my eyes down to the stack of parchment between us. Did he flinch? I didn’t look up to check. “We didn’t live in the Collis then. My sisters had just been born.

“We lived in a place called New Inverness. A small planet, though deeply divided by wealth and poverty. My father was a poor solider from an even poorer family. My mother was the daughter of a nobleman. As such, when they married—though my grandfather protested the match at first—he still wanted his daughter to be secure. He still bought them land. A small house. A stable with three horses because my mother had grown up riding and her father knew she loved them. And me too. She taught me how to ride. But one day, one of the horses was gone. Two months later, another one. My horse was the only that remained. Then I had an accident. She got spooked during a ride, and I got thrown off her back. I broke my arm.”

The story came pouring out from me, a memory that I hadn’t thought of in years until this moment. And I didn’t know why I was telling Azur this particular, vulnerable memory. Likely he would use it against me. But I still found the words coming out, drifting into the quiet space between us and echoing up in the tall room.

His ember eyes were pi

There has to be some give, I thought again, pushing forward.

“A few days later, my horse was gone too. My father claimed it was because riding was too dangerous, that he didn’t want me to get hurt. But now, especially in recent years, I think he was selling them. They’re expensive animals. Rare too. New Inverness is one of the last places that breeds them in all the Quadrants. I think someone paid him very well or he owed money that he couldn’t pay back.”

It still ached to think about. It ached to think what happened to her. I’d loved my horse. I’d called her Min. I’d spent hours and hours with her, every day for years. She’d been there before I could even walk. Thinking about the sudden loss of her, I knew it had been my first experience with heartbreak.

Truthfully, it felt cruel to me, looking back on it now with knowing eyes.

“Things would go missing from around the house. Valuables. Gold. Heirlooms,” I said, my voice nearly dropping into a whisper as shame built up in my chest. “Then the war happened, and it was like we forgot. We were only concerned with his return. If he’d come back at all. When he did, decorated in medals and accolades, we moved to the Collis. A gift from the New Earth forces. And for a brief time, everything felt perfect. It felt as it should.”

Then my mother’s depression had returned. Everything had changed again. But I didn’t voice that.

“Things began to disappear again,” I told him. “My father’s medals. Silverware. A necklace that my grandmother gave to my mother. Old family portraits.”

I forced myself to meet Azur’s eyes, afraid of what I’d find there. Judgment, perhaps. Disgust. For someone so wealthy, how could he understand the desperation? The constant, clawing worry of piles and piles of debt until you felt like you were drowning in it, unable to escape?

He was expressionless, however. His face was a cold, blank slate, as if I were speaking to a wall and not a living, breathing male.

It was a small relief, truthfully.

Swallowing, I said, “You have to understand that I didn’t discover the debts until five years ago.”

After Mother had been gone.

“My father was over five hundred vron in debt then,” I whispered, feeling my nostrils sting as I forced myself to say the number. “A collector had come to the estate. He…he hurt my father. Made him bleed, broke his arm. Only then did he tell me the truth.”

Azur’s gaze finally flickered. He finally moved. His wing twitched behind him and he ran a rough palm across his left horn.

“Raazos,” he murmured under his breath, looking away from me for a brief moment before his eyes cut back. His lips pressed together.

“I cut the debt down to two hundred fifty vron since then, even with the added interest.”

He rumbled, “How did you do that on your own?”

“I took over the management of the blue salt mines on our land in the Collis, which was our only source of new income. Coordinated all the exports. Negotiated with the collectors. I cut back our staff and tried to curb my family’s spending. I kept my sisters safe, protected. I…I…”

This was mortifying. It truly was. Admitting all this to Azur.

But I had done what I could for my family.

And while I didn’t quite feel proud to have paid off half of the debts on my own, I felt that I had at least done something.

“And then I married a Kylorr, who offered to make it all go away,” I finished softly. “Though I didn’t know what to expect. And in many ways, I still don’t.”

If there was nothing else, I would always be grateful to him for that. Regardless of what he wanted from me or how he treated me…he had thrown my family a lifeline. A way out. A fresh start for my father and, most importantly, my sisters. Fran too.

“And I know there is something more happening here,” I added softly. “Something I don’t understand or even see. Something that you gain from this.”

Azur’s eyes glowed as we regarded one another. It was a prodding statement, though I thought we’d both heard the question in it. Not that I expected him to answer it.

In the end, he didn’t.

Azur slowly rose from his crouch, silent and graceful for someone so large. His gaze cut away from me, quick and flitting, like he was…uncomfortable. Uncomfortable with the sudden shift of energy between us. Because I felt it. He must have too.

Dropping my gaze back to the pile I’d been sorting through, I ran my eyes unseeingly over the structured columns, filled with information that I wanted to learn about. Origin. Type. Soil. Weight. Plant Health. Stalk Width. Plume Span.

“I work hard,” I said. “And I would like to help. This way of record keeping is outdated and inefficient. I can make it so much easier. I know the Halo systems well. I can upload everything to a secure database that you can set up yourself, if you’d like, if you don’t trust me to do it.”

When I met Azur’s eyes, his nostrils flared.

“These are all just old harvest records anyway,” I said gently. “What harm could I possibly do?”

My heart was beating fast. I wanted this. Would he be cruel for no other reason than to deny me what I wanted?